Home Sales Fall Back into the Negative

(January 21, 2013) Sales of existing homes returned to the negative column last week after posting an increase the previous week, the first increase in home sales following four weeks of declines, according to the weekly National Home Sales Snapshot released by DataQuick.

There were 184,946 properties sold over the previous thirty-day rolling period ending January 10th, down 1.8 percent from the previous week’s total of 188,401 sold properties and 3.0 percent lower than the 190,635 properties sold four weeks ago.

Sales volume was 16.6 percent lower than the current year’s cycle peak of 221,695 sales which occurred during the 30-day rolling period prior to September 13th.

Last week’s home sales volume was still 9.2 percent higher than the 169,370 homes sold during the same period a year ago but was 6.0 percent lower than during the same period three years ago when 196,699 homes were sold. Home sales are about where they were in mid-May of last year..

The median price of a home sold over the current thirty-day rolling period increased by $1,000 from the previous week to $200,000. Four weeks ago the median home price was $195,700.

Home prices were 11.7 percent higher than the same period a year ago when the median price of a home was $179,000 and were 7.7 percent higher than what they were three years ago when the median price was $185,626. It was the 40th consecutive week that year-over-year home prices surpassed the previous year’s levels.

Over the last five years, median home prices nationwide have ranged from a high of $275,000 to a low of $168,500.

Home sales volume over the last five years has ranged from a high of 339,669 properties sold to a low of 124,051.

The National Home Sales Snapshot includes 98 out of the top 100 metropolitan statistical areas covering 66.25 percent of U.S. home sales.